OpenVPN has almost become synonymous with VPN clients and rightly so. It’s one of the fastest, most secure, and reliable VPN protocols out there. No matter which operating system you are on, most of the VPN clients have OpenVPN as their default tunneling protocol. Having said, there is talk of an OpenVPN alternative that claims to bring better performance and is much easier to set up. Yes, I am talking about WireGuard. While WireGuard is relatively new, it holds a lot of promise and that’s why we bring you an in-depth explainer on OpenVPN vs WireGuard. In this article, we talk about their similarity and differences and take you through some important aspects of WireGuard. So without further delay, let’s begin.
Before I begin, I want to give a brief overview of the development history and business model of both the VPN protocols. As most of us know, OpenVPN is among the oldest VPN protocols which was first released in 2001. It’s an open-source VPN protocol and run by the OpenVPN project. Having said that, OpenVPN is not free to use either for personal or commercial users so keep that in mind. Nevertheless, you can use the OpenVPN Community Edition for free, but with very limited features.
1. Security
When we talk about VPN protocols, security is treated as the top priority, hence, let’s begin with OpenVPN’s security first. Since OpenVPN has been here for so long, it has gone through many security audits and has been found secure and reliable without any glaring vulnerability. It has a CVE tracking mechanism where publicly known security vulnerabilities and exposures are reported and patched regularly. On the technical front, OpenVPN uses a custom security protocol based on SSL and TLS protocols. If you are unaware, TLS (Transport Layer Security) is one of the best cryptographic protocols which provides secure communication between two endpoints. In fact, this protocol is used by iPhones to share files through AirDrop.
While encryption is part of security, we have mentioned it separately to emphasize on various algorithmic techniques used by OpenVPN and WireGuard. As I said above, OpenVPN utilizes a security suite called OpenSSL which provides a range of 256-bit cryptographic algorithms like AES, 3DES, BlowFish and more. The algorithms are so powerful that it can traverse through NAT servers and firewalls without breaking the connection.
Now we come to another important aspect of VPN protocols: Authentication. OpenVPN uses two ways to authenticate between parties in a network. One is Certificate-based authentication which is the most secure method, but it’s slower in execution and another is Pre-shared keys which is the fastest way, but relatively less secure. Depending on the network environment, OpenVPN uses either of the authentication methods, but you can choose your own configuration too for better security. Source: SoftEther
In this battle of OpenVPN vs WireGuard, the major difference between the two protocols is performance. The reason WireGuard is touted to be the VPN protocol of the future is that it offers almost 2X performance jump than what OpenVPN offers. And the reason is quite simple: unlike OpenVPN which runs as an application, WireGuard runs as a module inside the Linux kernel. So the cryptographic services are executed really fast while operating encryption or decryption processes. Apart from that, due to the deep integration with the kernel, there is not much layer to interact with which saves time significantly.
OpenVPN is available everywhere including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Windows Phone and more. In fact, almost all the modern VPNs are based on OpenVPN protocol. We have covered the best VPN for Windows, Android, iPhone, iPad and macOS so check those lists too. Other than that, OpenVPN’s protocol is also used in many routers’ firmware for tunneling data packets in a secure method.
So at this point, WireGuard is nowhere near OpenVPN in terms of adoption and platform support. However, after the upcoming Linux kernel release and subsequent adoption by Google and Apple, many mainstream VPN clients like ExpressVPN and PIA may start implementing the WireGuard protocol in their apps.
